Healthy Homemade Salad Dressing

I always encourage my clients to make their own salad dressing vs. buying store-bought. Most pre-packaged, store-bought dressings are full of preservatives, sugar, salt and unhealthy oils. It’s easy to make your own, and so much better for you because you can use awesome, healthy ingredients.

This Apple Cider Honey Dijon Vinaigrette is one of my favourite dressings. You can use it on everyday salads or as a healthy coleslaw dressing. Here’s why it’s a healthy choice:

Apple cider vinegar is full of health benefits: made from fermented apple juice; it puts good bacteria back into your gut; making it amazing for healthy digestion, it aids in weight loss, lowers cholesterol & high blood pressure, and stabilizes blood sugar.

Extra virgin olive oil or EVOO is a monounsaturated fat or healthy fat. Healthy fats burn bad fats, and are good for your brain, heart & skin. Because it’s unstable when heated it’s best to consume EVOO raw in dressing, dips and pesto.

Includes only 4 ingredients; no added preservatives, sugar, salt or chemicals.

I own a salad dressing emulsifier (pictured above), and make a big batch of this dressing every couple weeks, and store it in the fridge. It’s important to store unstable oils, and all nuts & seeds (mainly made up of polyunsaturated & monounsaturated oils) in the fridge (cool, dark place) as exposure to heat & light can cause the oil to go rancid, and increase free radical activity in the body when consumed. This is another reason I discourage store-bought dressings; most of them are oil-based, and stored under the bright lights of the grocery store, and not in the fridge.